While the word on multivitamins is discouraging for postmenopausal women hoping to stay healthy (check out “The latest bulletin from the vitamin wars“) new findings on exercise offer good news.

Exercise improves the quality of life for women after menopause even if they don’t shed a pound, according to a study of 430 women conducted by Corby K. Martin, PhD, and his colleagues at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and Louisiana State University System, Baton Rouge. The women, who were sedentary at the beginning of the trial, were randomly divided into a non-exercise control group or one of three exercise groups, of varying intensity. Over the six-month study, between 88 and 95 percent of the women in the activity groups followed the program.

The more activity the women engaged in, the better their self-reported quality of life, the researchers found. Compared to the sedentary control group, all three exercise groups significantly improved their social functioning scores–a measure of the capacity to engage in normal social activities.

“Our results indicate that improved quality of life can be added to the list of exercise benefits and that these improvements are dose dependent and independent of weight loss, at least among people similar to this study’s sample,” the authors of the paper, published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded.

© 2009 PDQhealth

Tags: exercise, physical activity, postmenopausal women, quality of life